Changing Hosting Companies - Site Downtime - Google Indexing Concern

[MWM3772]

We are getting ready to switch to a new hosting company.  When we make the switchover, our sites will be offline for a couple of hours and in some cases perhaps as long as 12 hours while DNS is configured -- should we be worried about Google trying to index pages and finding them unavailable?  Any fear of Google de-indexing pages.  Our guess was that Google would not de-index anything after just a short period of not being able to find pages -- it would have to be over an extended period of time before GOOGLE or BING would de-index pages -- CORRECT?

Just want to gut check this before pulling the trigger on switch over to new hosting company.     We appreciate input on this and/or any other thoughts regarding the switch over to new hosting company that we may not have thought of.

Thanks,

• Matt

[CleverPhD]

I would say it is preferable to go ahead and setup the site on the new host first before you take down the old one.  While you should be "ok" with the downtime, I would not recommend it.  You never know when the spiders come along.  You would probably not be de-indexed, but Google would see a bunch of errors and you could potentially see a drop in the SERPS and then traffic to your site as a result.  This should all recover.

I have seen on our sites drops in traffic when we have had technical difficulties.  I usually see issues in GWT or other tools and I get them fixed and the traffic comes back.

Here is the other thing.  What if something goes wrong during that 12 hours?  What if  12 hours becomes 24, 48 etc. due to unforseen issues.  That is just bad for business/users in general when a site is down for any amount of time.  You do not want that, let alone the search engine issue. What if something goes wrong with the new host and you need to revert back to the old?  This has happened to me and trust me, you do not want this to happen to you.  Murphy likes to play games with scenarios like this, I do not mess with Mr. Murphy and his laws.

If I were you here is what I would do

1. setup the new host

2. setup your site on the new host

3. test test test on the new host

4. change the DNS from the old to the new host

5. watch the traffic move

6. test test test on the new host

7. shut down the old host

We have overlapped for up to 2 months with old and new hosts just to make sure everything is set.  You always back up your data yes?  Why would you not want to have a backup with your entire website?

Good luck!

[MWM3772]

Thanks, appreciate it.

[KeriMorgret]

There's an excellent blog post about this at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-handle-downtime-during-site-maintenance too.

[MWM3772]

thanks, good resource